Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that two US peace negotiators will visit Ukraine on Sunday after visiting Moscow, and he called on Russia to halt its air attacks on Ukraine during the negotiators’ visit. Ukraine’s president said Kyiv would guarantee the safety of Russian airspace during the visit of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Moscow, after which they are expected to travel on to Kyiv.
Donald Trump, the US president, said: “We have an idea for peace … I sent Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, two great negotiators.” The New York Times reported that Washington has asked both sides for a ceasefire during the envoys’ visit. Kushner is Trump’s son-in-law and Witkoff deals in real estate.
SBU headquarters hit by drone
The headquarters of Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency took a direct hit from a Russian drone on Friday, Amy Hawkins reports from Kyiv. Zelenskyy said he had instructed the SBU to deliver an “appropriate, tangible response” to the strike, while the foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, described it as a “major escalation”. Zelenskyy said: “The drone was aimed directly at the office of the head of the security service in that building.” At least nine people were injured in Friday’s strike, according to Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko.
Airline suspends Moscow flights
Air Tanzania said it was suspending flights from Dar es Salaam to Moscow from Friday, becoming the first airline to do so after Zelenskyy warned this week that the skies over Russia were unsafe because of Ukraine’s retaliatory drone attacks. The airline said on Facebook that it took the step after “a routine risk assessment of the operating environment along the route”. Vladimir Putin on Thursday falsely claimed that Ukraine was threatening to attack civilian aircraft. Moscow has protested to the UN’s aviation agency after Ukraine asked it to have member countries keep their airlines out of Russian airspace.
“Ukraine does not threaten civilian aviation as such – not a single civilian aircraft,” Zelenskyy said during the week. “There will simply be drones in Russia’s skies on a scale that has to be taken into account.”
Overnight attacks and international reaction
A “massive” overnight Russian attack on the Odesa region killed one person and injured at least five others, including a child, regional head Oleh Kiper said on Friday. The attacks damaged multiple residential buildings, including two multistorey blocks. Strikes elsewhere in Ukraine killed two police officers in Dnipro, officials said, while a drone attack in Kyiv wounded three people after hitting a residential building.
In Russia, a large-scale Ukrainian drone strike hit the Black Sea resort city of Sochi and the nearby district of Sirius, regional officials said on Friday. They said the attack sparked a blaze at an oil depot. Russian media outlets reported two oil depots were hit, with one fire in Sochi and another in Sirius.
Finnish authorities said they were investigating how a Russian-made drone ended up on the shore in the Pellinge archipelago east of Helsinki. Finland’s border guard said it appeared to be a Geoscan 701 drone, manufactured by a Russian company. “The device model in question is used by both state and civilian operators, and it is not possible at this stage to determine its intended use or identify the country or entity operating it.”
A World Health Organization warehouse storing humanitarian medical supplies was struck during an air attack on the Kyiv region, continuing what the WHO said was a pattern of such attacks across Ukraine. In 2026, at least 20 attacks have affected depots storing humanitarian goods including healthcare supplies, said a WHO spokesperson in Geneva.
A vice-president in the far-right party of French presidential contender Marine Le Pen has sparked a furore by saying France would “turn off the tap” to Ukraine if National Rally (RN) came to power. Louis Aliot claimed the RN “condemned the Russian aggression” but said the war had “weakened Europe”. One of Le Pen’s leading rivals in the elections, centre-right politician Edouard Philippe, who served as Macron’s first prime minister, retorted that “turning off the tap to Ukraine is serving Russia”. “Weakening Ukraine, as Marine Le Pen wishes, is threatening the security of Europe and France. I will do everything to prevent it.” Le Pen herself entered the fray, claiming that her party was pushing for a “diplomatic resolution of this abominable war”.
The head of Memorial, Russia’s Nobel peace prize-winning rights group, has told AFP she fears a fresh crackdown after September’s legislative elections, with more people arrested and sent to fight in Ukraine. Elena Zhemkova also vowed to keep up the fight for human rights in Russia, despite her group being declared illegal and herself forced into exile. “Unfortunately, I think that now everything is getting worse, but not so fast,” the 65-year-old said. “But after the elections, there will be a very sharp deterioration.”
